Bushfire survival should not be an individual responsibility. It should be a community concern. Maybe the death toll of this weekend’s Victorian fires will change things, but for now it seems that too often individuals were left in situations that proved fatally beyond them.
He suggests the areas that got hit hard did not have community shelters but relied on individual solutions. Speed and wind was a factor, but methods will change. Maybe this will change after a Royal Commission.
Very worrying is this further down in his article.
On Saturday afternoon the Mount Tassie radio and TV Communications tower in the Strezlecki's was burnt and now -- Monday -- nothing has been patched together. Why not? The Dargo fires in East Gippsland are still burning at the time of writing. This has left a large area of Gippsland without any TV and FM radio communication as the AM Radio signal to the east is weak or non existent.
In a mountainous area general radio will be the only means of getting info out to the masses when the power lines have burnt down. Too late to find out you have no comms when the fire front comes knocking. My question is where were the signals component of the Army or Territorials that should have been there as a high priority providing temporary mobile relay towers for the area?
Local TV was on to it in Bendigo. [Insert Tui here.]
Bendigo residents had their local fire reporting on regional ABC interrupted by a State wide round up just as the fires were heading up the streets burning houses -- lessons can be learned here too.
Too bloody late when then fire is in your street melting the copper powering your TV.
Surely in this modern age comms can be a whole lot better.
Finally,
How can communications be better secured in these extreme conditions? Only objective analysis will provide the answers.
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